Rick Holmes: Steering clear of danger

It is the season for rites of passage. Boys put on their tuxes and pretend to be men. Girls spend obscene amounts on gowns, jewelry and spa treatments to create the illusion of womanhood.

Rick Holmes

It is the season for rites of passage. Boys put on their tuxes and pretend to be men. Girls spend obscene amounts on gowns, jewelry and spa treatments to create the illusion of womanhood.

Soon the totaled remains of cars will make their seasonal appearance on high school lawns in recognition that the spring rites of passage for many young people include getting drunk and driving around.

Teenage substance abuse is a year-round activity, of course. On any given weekend in any of our towns, kids are partying hard at some house where the parents are away.

But this time of year, when there's so much to celebrate, when it's warm enough to take the bottles out to a dark backyard, is an especially dangerous season. Between the first prom and the last graduation party, some kid in our area - maybe two or three - will find their rite of passage leads to the morgue. You can set your calendar by it.

We parents do our best. We lecture and worry and say a little prayer as we hand them the keys. We lock them in school for an alcohol-free after-prom party. We park the wrecked car outside the school.

But we expect them to break the rules, at least a lot of us do. We did the same thing when we were young.

But between wink-and-a-nod attitudes and "just say no" platitudes, there is emerging knowledge about adolescents and drugs that, if parents accept it, can save lives and heartache.

That knowledge begins with new understanding about the adolescent brain that has come through brain scan technology that wasn't available a decade ago. What they've learned should not be surprising: Those teenagers may look fully developed on the outside, but their brains have room to grow.

The last part of the brain to kick in, science has found, is the prefrontal cortex. That's where judgment resides, along with willpower, impulse control and the ability to foresee the consequences of actions. There's a reason teenagers can't seem to process the simple lesson that if you don't buckle your seat belt now, you may be exiting the car through the windshield later: The prefrontal circuitry where cause-and-effect understanding takes place isn't wired yet.

That part of the brain, research shows, isn't fully functional until age 24.

One thing that is fully functional in the adolescent brain, though, is the pleasure pathway. The circuitry that translates the chemicals in alcohol and drugs into pleasure works even better in teenagers than adults, which is one reason binge drinking is more common in young people. Immature brains experience higher highs.

Those neural pathways are also where addiction happens. The younger you are and the sooner you start, the more susceptible you are to the brain-changing effects of drugs.

"Addiction is a pediatric disease," says addiction researcher David K. Friedman. Almost no one gets addicted to cigarettes, for instance, after they turn 20.

A recent study of more than 42,000 adults found that 47 percent of people who began drinking alcohol before age 14 became alcohol-dependent at some time in their lives, compared to 9 percent who waited until they were at least 21.

This understanding should change the conversation around teen substance abuse, and some are putting it to work. The MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation and the Education Development Center of Newton, Mass., are bringing their "evidence-based" drug education programs to 10 area communities.

The point is to identify "best practices" for drug education and community-building. Those don't include the wrecked car on the school lawn.

"Scare tactics don't work," explains Diane Barry of EDC, mostly because the prefrontal cortex isn't ready to receive that message. That includes most of the D.A.R.E. curriculum, which is popular with fifth graders but forgotten by the time they reach high school.

But the brains of parents are ready to receive new information, if it's delivered right. They first must be convinced that getting wasted is not an integral part of the American teenage experience - even if they remember their own lost weekends with fondness.

"I tell them that we mostly didn't use seat belts when we were growing up either, because we didn't know any better," says Jane Roche, program coordinator for Hopkinton, Mass., "but today's parents wouldn't think of carrying around their kids without their seat belts buckled."

The teen drinking scene has changed as well. Hard liquor is sweeter than ever, to appeal to kids used to soda pop. A generation ago, binge drinking was mostly a male sport, but the gap between girls and boys has closed.

While school-based forums mostly preach to the choir, the foundation-supported programs work to bring the message home. They use the "Tupperware party" approach, Barry says, encouraging parents to invite the parents of their children's friends over to talk about teen substance abuse. They learn about the research, and about laws that hold parents responsible for underage drinking in their homes.

Networked parents are a key tool for preventing substance abuse. They can agree to call each other to make sure the party their children are off to is well-supervised. They can let other parents - and the police - when they are going to be out of town, helping ensure their house doesn't become the site of a wild party. They can share warning signs about kids who may be at risk.

Getting parents, educators and police on the same page is also critical. What are the police procedures when they catch a teen with booze? What are the schools teaching? How can they work together, not just to send a consistent message but to open lines of communication with the community's youth. How can they get treatment for kids who are already in trouble?

Drug abuse doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yes, there are well-adjusted young people for whom drinking and drugs are risky diversions on a normal developmental curve. There are also kids with serious mental health problems whose substance abuse is more about self-medication than fun.

Those on the front lines of teen substance abuse don't fool themselves with "zero tolerance" rhetoric. Drinking and drugging is too deeply embedded in youth culture to wish it away. But there are lives that can be saved and crippling addictions that can be avoided if adults and young people face the facts about the vulnerabilities of the adolescent brain and talk honestly - and often - about the dangers that accompany their rites of passage.

Rick Holmes, opinion editor of the MetroWest Daily News, blogs at Holmes & Co. (http://blogs.townonline.com/holmesandco). He can be reached at rholmes@cnc.com.